Waterloo’s first-ever Wal-Mart store isn’t getting the same reception a proposed store got a decade ago when the city and the UpTown BIA manned the walls to try to keep the world’s biggest retailer out.

Wal-Mart will be coming to the Bridgeport Plaza after operations of the Zellers store that currently exists at the site wind down this June. Zellers parent company Hudson Bay has already started the process, launching a liquidation sale last week at the store after earlier selling off the lease of the 70 Bridgeport Rd. store to Target Canada.

Target Canada announced last week it would be selling that lease to Wal-Mart, opening the door for its first official Waterloo store. Wal-Mart Canada couldn’t be reached for comment about when the new store would open, but there have been some preliminary discussions with city officials as they wait on a site plan change application from the retailer.

Cameron Rapp, general manager of development services for the city, said the site is already zoned commercial and it would fit in with what already exists on the site.

“We’ve already seen some preliminary drawings and they’re going to reskin the exterior,” said Rapp. “It’s a different label department store in a location that we think a department store should be at.”

He said the city doesn’t zone bu brand and the fight over the Wal-Mart in St. Jacobs was more about providing servicing to a site that had both traffic issues and concerns about its location in the township. There were also concerns raised about the impact the big box retailer would have on other commercial nodes in Waterloo including Conestoga Mall and the uptown core.

“There were a lot of arguments back then about whether that was the right place for a 100,000 square-foot department store that didn’t have the services — they would have to get the services from us — and there were traffic issues,” said Rapp. “We were also concerned about the commercial impact because we believed it was in the country in lands zoned as industrial at that time.

“This new Wal-Mart is replacing an existing store, and it’s good we’re seeing continued employment as opposed to a vacancy.”

Rapp said the city has grown since the original Wal-Mart controversy and there has been a lot more commercial demand since then, with the new Boardwalk development on the west side including another Wal-Mart store, and other projects adding to the inventory.

The St. Jacobs Wal-Mart store, officially called the Waterloo Wal-Mart store when it opened, eventually reached a settlement with the city on servicing and the Uptown BIA received $500,000 for uptown improvements to buffer it against the change.

Uptown merchants were made aware Wal-Mart was coming to the core at a board meeting of the BIA last week. Some businesses expressed concern, especially since it is only a few blocks away from the uptown core.

“It’s literally two blocks outside of our core boundary,” said Patti Brooks, executive director of the UpTown BIA. “The same issues do apply as last time, but it’s happened so quickly that we haven’t been involved in the process.